Champions of the First Amendment: Reporters Committee announces 2025 Freedom of the Press Award recipients
Today, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press announced the recipients of the 2025 Freedom of the Press Awards, hosted this year by Judy Woodruff, senior correspondent and the former anchor and managing editor of the PBS News Hour. The Freedom of the Press Awards recognize the accomplishments of leaders in the news media and legal fields whose work embodies the values of the First Amendment.
The 2025 honorees are:
- Amanda Bennett, former CEO, U.S. Agency for Global Media
- Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief, The Atlantic
- Terry Baquet, co-founder and editor-in-chief, Verite News
- The Baltimore Banner
- Brad Kutrow, partner, McGuireWoods
“From reporting powerful investigative stories to providing tenacious legal support for journalists in need, these honorees show us the power of a free press and those who defend it,” said Reporters Committee Chairman Stephen J. Adler. “We’re thrilled to recognize their exceptional contributions to protecting the First Amendment and keeping the public informed.”
The 2025 Freedom of the Press Awards will be held on Oct. 15 at the Ziegfeld Ballroom in New York City. The event is co-chaired by Tom Glocer, executive chairman and co-founder of BlueVoyant Inc., and Norman Pearlstine, editor and media executive.
“At a time when our free press is under attack, the extraordinary achievements of this year’s Freedom of the Press Award winners remind us why the First Amendment is worth fighting for,” said Bruce D. Brown, president of the Reporters Committee. “Thanks to their hard work and dedication, communities across the country are more informed about issues that impact their lives.”
Bennett and Goldberg will each be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Career Achievement Award, which honors individuals with a long history of upholding the value of freedom of the press throughout their career.
Bennett is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, investigative journalist, and editor. She served as CEO of U.S. Agency for Global Media from 2022 to 2025, and she was director of Voice of America from 2016 to 2020.
Before Voice of America, Bennett was executive editor at Bloomberg News, where she created and ran a global team of investigative reporters and editors. She served as editor at The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Herald-Leader in Lexington, Kentucky, and as managing editor/projects at The Oregonian, where she led a team to a Pulitzer Prize for public service. Before The Oregonian, she worked at The Wall Street Journal for 22 years, during which she shared a Pulitzer Prize for national reporting. She has also been a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, a board member of the Pulitzer Prizes, and a member of the advisory board of the Nieman Center at Harvard University. Bennett has served on the boards of The Loeb Awards, the Committee to Protect Journalists, The Lenfest Institute, and the German Marshall Fund. She is the author or co-author of six nonfiction books, including “The Cost of Hope,” her memoir of the battle she and her late husband fought against his kidney cancer.
Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic and the moderator of “Washington Week With The Atlantic.” He joined The Atlantic in 2007 as a national correspondent and in 2016 was named the magazine’s 15th editor in chief.
As editor, Goldberg has been a champion of press freedom and editorial independence; has led The Atlantic’s aggressive, rigorous, and compelling coverage across subjects; has built a collective of the best writers in the U.S.; and has pushed for ever-greater ambition, quality, and reach. His reporting at The Atlantic has been defined by memorable coverage of elected officials and military leadership. He reported the definitive cover story on President Obama’s foreign policy doctrine; during the first Trump administration, he broke a story about President Trump’s repeated disparagement of the military and service members; and in a cover story reported over years of travel and with deep sourcing, he revealed the lengths former chairman of the joint chiefs General Mark Milley had to go to in order to prevent the worst from happening in the chaotic period before and after the 2020 election. In 2025, Goldberg reported that the Trump administration’s top-most national-security leaders inadvertently included him in a group chat on Signal about upcoming military strikes in Yemen, sparking a major global news story and leading to continued fallout.
Before joining The Atlantic, Goldberg served as the Middle East correspondent, and then the Washington correspondent, for The New Yorker, and he authored “Prisoners: A Story of Friendship and Terror.” Earlier in his career, he was a writer for The New York Times Magazine and a police reporter for The Washington Post.
The Baltimore Banner will be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Catalyst Award, which honors journalists or organizations whose reporting has had a significant impact.
The Banner is a nonprofit news organization in Baltimore founded by Stewart Bainum. In 2025, less than three years after its founding, the Banner won its first Pulitzer Prize for local reporting for its coverage of the overdose crisis in Maryland, which it produced in partnership with The New York Times. Using records that it obtained in a successful public records lawsuit against the Maryland Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, the Banner found that people in Baltimore have been dying of overdose at a rate never before seen in any major American city and that the crisis disproportionately impacted Black men. The Banner’s reporting sparked a national conversation on the opioid epidemic and immediate calls for change.
In 2024, a Banner investigation into decades of child sexual abuse allegations against church figures at an East Baltimore-based megachurch drove public calls for accountability and prompted the church to expel two pastors and review its handling of the allegations.
Baquet will be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Local Champion Award, which honors a journalist, attorney, or organization whose work has had a significant impact locally.
Baquet is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Verite News, a Black-led, nonprofit news organization with a twofold mission: to produce in-depth journalism that serves the whole community, while training, developing, and mentoring a new generation of minority journalists to work on the ground in New Orleans.
Baquet is a 28-year veteran of NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune and a lifelong New Orleanian. He served as Sunday editor and was the page one editor during the paper’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina, which won two Pulitzer Prizes in breaking news and public service. Later, he served as managing editor/director of print and ran The Times-Picayune’s engagement efforts. Baquet has served on the boards of Lede New Orleans and Spaceship Media.
Kutrow will be recognized with the Freedom of the Press Pro Bono Service Award, which honors those who have dedicated significant time and support to journalists and newsrooms through ProJourn, a program operated by the Reporters Committee with support from Microsoft, Davis Wright Tremaine, and the Knight Foundation that brings together teams of law firm media attorneys and corporate in-house counsel to meet the growing needs of local journalists.
A former reporter, Kutrow is a partner in McGuireWoods’ Commercial Litigation practice and member of the firm’s Appeals and Issues group. He has provided crucial pro bono support to journalists and newsrooms as McGuireWoods’ lead partner in the ProJourn program. Kutrow has broad litigation experience, with emphasis on business torts, securities, products liability, and First Amendment litigation. He maintains an active appellate practice and was founding chair of the Appellate Practice Section of the North Carolina Bar Association. Kutrow has represented appellants, appellees, and amici curiae in North Carolina’s appellate courts, arguing before the North Carolina Supreme Court five times.
For information about sponsorships and ticket purchases, please visit rcfp.org/awards2025. View a list of past Freedom of the Press Award winners on our website.
The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press is the leading pro bono legal services provider for journalists and news organizations in the United States, offering direct legal representation, amicus curiae support, and other legal resources to protect First Amendment freedoms and the newsgathering rights of journalists. Stay up-to-date on our work by signing up for our newsletters and following us on Bluesky, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook.